Mr Eternity: The Story of Arthur Stace

By Roy Williams and Elizabeth Meyers

Almost every day for 35 years, Arthur Stace spent hours writing a single word – Eternity – on and around the streets of Sydney. Sometimes his mission took him much further afield, to country New South Wales and even to Melbourne.
Stace’s identity was a mystery for more than two decades. Then, after his ‘unmasking’ in 1956, he became a reluctant folk hero. By the time he died, in 1967, his was a household name and the word Eternity was ingrained in the soul of Sydney. It still is.
In this long-awaited biography, the full story of Arthur Stace’s life is told for the first time in vivid and often surprising detail. Drawing upon many original sources, some never before made public, this book will engross Christians and non-believers alike – anyone who loves a great Australian story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Acorn Press
• Release date: Nov 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9780994616661

Roy Williams

One of Australia's emerging public intellectuals and writers, Roy Williams' distinguished 20-year career in the legal profession was cut short in 2004 when he experienced a life-changing illness. Forced to leave the law, he took time to recuperate before deciding to become a writer. His book reviews appear regularly in The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald. He also contributes to Australian Literary Review, Dissent and Inside Sport. More information can be found at www.godactually.com

Book preview

Published by Acorn Press

An imprint of Bible Society Australia

ACN 148 058 306

GPO Box 9874

Sydney NSW 2001

Australia

www.biblesociety.org.au | www.acornpress.net.au

© 2017 Elizabeth Meyers

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Unless otherwise indicated, Bible quotes are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Quotes marked ‘NIV’ are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

For a detailed list of the sources used for the illustrations in this book, please see page 280.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this work may be reproduced by electronic or other means without the permission of the publisher.

Editor: Kristin Argall.

Cover design and text layout: Andrew and Jenny Moody.

Printed by Openbook Howden Design & Print.

This book is dedicated by Elizabeth Meyers to her beloved parents, Rev. Lisle Matthew Thompson and Mrs May Annie Thompson, who devoted their lives to faithful service of their Saviour and Lord.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:5 (NIV)

Contents

Foreword

Introduction: Mr Eternity

1. Born Unto Trouble

2. The Sins of the Fathers

3. The Road to Perdition

4. And Lead Us Not into Temptation

5. He That Doeth

6. The Lot is Cast into the Lap

7. The Furnace of Affliction

8. Lost in the Wilderness

9. From Darkness to Light

10. Echoes of Eternity

11. Rivers in the Desert

12. More Precious Than Rubies

13. Growing in Faith

14. As Iron Sharpens Iron

15. Knock and It Will Be Opened

16. Fruits of the Spirit

17. The Valley of the Shadow of Death

18. At Home with the Lord

19. If What Has Been Built Survives

20. What Do These Stones Mean?

Epilogue: Reflections on Eternity

Notes

Sources

About the Authors

Foreword

Mr Eternity looms large in my childhood memories of Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle. Childhood memories can be tricky things, so I checked my recollections with my sister, Judy, who, unlike me, never forgets. We recalled Arthur Stace as a dapper man with hat, tie and jacket; always neatly attired. Sometimes we would note that he was late for church, but he would never just wander in – he would act always like he had been caught up with some serious task. No doubt he was writing the word Eternity on some street corner in Sydney. I also recall sitting on his knee knowing, by all the watching eyes, that I was in the lap of a significant person. But to me he was just the dapper Mr Stace. His wife Pearl, always referred to as Mrs Stace, was a very ordered person and although most likeable, as children we certainly watched our ways in her presence.

I now know Arthur Stace to be one of the most interesting and significant figures in Australian Christian life. It’s not inappropriate to call him an ‘unlikely hero’, as he came from a horrid background. The kind of narrative God does great things with. At a time when the church is rediscovering the word ‘missional’, it could do a lot worse than reflect on Arthur Stace. He is arguably our most creative and artistic missional leader. If I recall correctly, it was artist Martin Sharp who said, at an event, words to the effect that Arthur Stace achieved, in one word, a novel which took Patrick White 100,000 words. He became one of the world’s great graffiti artists and one of the few whose work and life lives on. He took the word Eternity out of the church and into the streets of Sydney. But more, the word went global as it blazed from the Sydney Harbour Bridge as the pinnacle of our New Year’s Eve millennium celebrations, viewed worldwide including in London, New York, Singapore and Hong Kong. The four walls of the church could not contain the message of Arthur Stace. But not only was he missional in an artistic and creative sense, this book clearly shows that he was a respected evangelist who held the attention of crowds in a variety of environments. This book also explodes the myth that Arthur Stace was illiterate, but it does reveal that his copperplate script writing of the word Eternity was an inspiration, if not a gift, of God. It was beyond his natural ability.

This is not just a story of God’s working in one man’s life. (Of course there is his wife, Pearl.) However, the three central characters are Arthur, Baptist evangelist John Ridley and Anglican archdeacon R.B.S. Hammond. Some believe in coincidences, but when you read of the lives of these three men, from different backgrounds and experiences, anyone with a seed of faith will see the extraordinary hand of God. John Ridley was converted at Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle. R.B.S. Hammond delivered the message that led to the transformation of Arthur Stace, who then attended an evangelistic event featuring Ridley at Burton Street. Ridley preached on eternity and cried out ‘Eternity – I wish that I could sound, or shout that word to everyone on the streets of Sydney.’ That prophetic hope gave birth to Mr Eternity: The ‘power’ of a sermon.

It’s not just a story of people, it’s also the story of a church. Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle played a remarkable role in touching people’s lives that in turn touched the city and beyond. Fittingly, although the church is no longer there, the building lives on as Eternity Playhouse, courtesy of the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore. And it is also a story of how God has interwoven, for his glory, the ministry of denominations, primarily Baptist and Anglican. Some might suggest, ‘Lord, do it again!’

This book is a must-read. There is no one who knows the Arthur Stace story better than Elizabeth Meyers. Roy Williams is one of our finest writers. If you have heard of Arthur Stace, this book will sweep away the myths and leave you with the real man. The authors superbly create a narrative that will engage you in a divine drama of how God takes all the cogs and turns them into the finest instrument. It’s only on historical reflection, as seen here, that we start to understand the full picture. During the actual time of Arthur Stace we only saw dimly, so it’s appropriate that this book is now written. It’s a modern miracle story that will inspire and motivate all.

Rev. Dr Ross Clifford AM

Principal, Morling College

President, Asia Pacific Baptist Federation

Introduction: Mr Eternity

That shy mysterious poet Arthur Stace

Whose work was just one single mighty word.

Douglas Stewart

As night fell on 31 December 1999, five million Sydneysiders looked forward to hours of splendid celebration. It was the eve of the twenty-first century; the eve of the third millennium. A feast of live entertainment was planned, much of it on Sydney’s majestic, incomparable harbour.

An estimated one million people clustered on the foreshores, residents and tourists alike.¹ Others took to the water in boats of all kinds. There had not been a scene like this since the Bicentennial festivities of Australia Day 1988. Countless lights sparkled and shone, in many colours of the rainbow; the water rippled; stars of the Australian music industry performed at harbourside venues. The highlight was a performance in the Opera House forecourt of Icehouse’s classic song ‘Great Southern Land.’ It was reworked and expanded for the occasion by its composer, Iva Davies, as part of a colossal 25-minute work, ‘Ghost of Time.’ The musicians took their final bows a few minutes before midnight.

By now, literally billions of people were watching on television, their attention fixed on Australia’s premier city. The first of January 2000 would arrive in Sydney before dawning in any other comparable city on Earth.

At ten seconds to midnight the countdown began. Then, as the new millennium arrived, there came a massive fireworks display – perhaps the most spectacular ever seen in Australia – that lasted 24 minutes. The focal points were Sydney’s two matchless icons of engineering: the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. At the end, a fiery cascade erupted downwards from the Bridge’s deck. The bells of a dozen churches pealed loudly.

And then, as the smoke cleared, it came into view – emblazoned in gold letters just below the apex of the Bridge’s towering arch. The first written word of the third millennium, in distinctive copperplate script:

Eternity

The crowds cheered with gusto. This was a word deeply and affectionately associated with the history of Sydney – and with one man in particular. He was not the first person to write ‘eternity’ around the streets of Sydney,² but he was certainly the most prolific. He did it using chalk or crayon every day for almost 35 years, perhaps half a million times in all.

His name was Arthur Malcolm Stace. He had died 32 years before, but was far from forgotten.

May Thompson, 84 years old on New Year’s Eve 1999, watched the television broadcast from the comfort of her bed. She was a frail, silver-haired old lady now, a widow of more than three decades, living alone in a small house in the lower Blue Mountains of New South Wales.

May had known Arthur Stace intimately in life. For fourteen years, from 1951 to 1964, her late husband, Lisle M. Thompson, had been Stace’s beloved pastor at the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle in the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst. It was the Rev. Thompson, in June 1956, who persuaded Arthur to ‘go public.’ But for Thompson, it is possible, even likely, that Arthur Stace’s identity would never have been known.

The sight of Eternity on the Harbour Bridge had moved May Thompson to tears and rekindled myriad memories, sweet and sad and everything in between. As soon as the television broadcast concluded, she reached for the phone by her bed and called her oldest daughter Elizabeth Meyers. Elizabeth, too, had known Arthur Stace well. She had met him at the age of nine, as an impressionable girl, and was a young married woman when he died. Now 58, happily married to her husband Lionel and with two grown-up daughters of her own, Elizabeth was extremely close to her aged mother. She recalls part of their conversation that night.

‘Arthur would have felt very humbled by that,’ May said, the catch in her voice betraying a certain melancholy. But she also felt enormous satisfaction, and something of a sense of closure. ‘Elizabeth, I believe Arthur’s story could be written now.’

For many years May had hoped, and intended, to write the story herself. She had gathered a large amount of information, but time and circumstances had defeated her. The millennium celebrations had renewed her determination to see it done.

It had not come as a surprise – to May or the people of Sydney – when Eternity lit up the Harbour Bridge that memorable night. A fortnight or so earlier, workmen had begun erecting the metal frames holding the letters to the eastern side of the Bridge. After a few days, it was clear where things were leading. Stories began appearing in the media in anticipation.³

May Thompson was interviewed by the Sydney Morning Herald’s Malcolm Knox for an article that appeared on 29 December. It included a thumbnail sketch of Arthur Stace’s life that was accurate as far as it went. Crucially, Knox emphasised the key point about Stace – he was an evangelical Protestant Christian for whom Eternity was a one-word sermon (based on Isaiah 57:15). He would have approved heartily of May Thompson’s remarks to Knox:

The millennium has many people thinking about time, but Eternity only lies in the hands of the Lord. I wonder what the average person thinks of Arthur’s ‘Eternity’? I think of accountability to the Almighty. It’s useful to get people thinking about how they will spend Eternity.⁴

(The designer of the Bridge, J.J.C. Bradfield, would have adored it all, by the way. Apart from being an inveterate publicity hound, Bradfield had a mischievous sense of humour and was a serious practising Anglican. He once described the Bridge as ‘a fane of beauty expressive of the divinity and spirit of God, of the I AM who spoke to Moses from the burning bush.’⁵)

By 30 December, the full word Eternity was visible on the Bridge. Another distinguished Australian journalist, David Marr, wrote a reflective front-page story for the Herald. It appeared on New Year’s Eve under the headline ‘From here to Eternity’, but dealt far more ambivalently than Knox’s had done with the Christian implications of Arthur Stace’s message.

Earlier that year, Marr had published a book, The High Price of Heaven,⁶ lambasting what he saw as the excessively ‘wowserish’ fixations of the Australian churches down the years. ‘One thing about tonight is clear,’ he asserted in the Herald on 31 December, ‘there’s no sense that the fireworks will mark a great Christian anniversary.’⁷ It was true, as Marr proceeded to explain, that our calendar years are numbered from the year of Christ’s birth. But, as Marr also noted, those responsible for creating the dating system in the fifth and seventh centuries AD⁸ got their calculations slightly wrong. Jesus of Nazareth was born in or about 5 BC.

Marr’s tone reflected the cynical attitude toward Christianity of a large proportion of the Australian population, especially those in the ‘better educated’ classes. That trend has intensified since 2000.

The artistic director of the millennium celebrations was Ignatius Jones, formerly the lead singer of Australian shock-rock band Jimmy and the Boys, and by 1999 one of the world’s most innovative and sought-after event organisers. It was Jones’ inspired idea to use Eternity on the Bridge, and, at the time, he explained his reasons:

It’s incredibly Sydney. It symbolised for me the madness, mystery and magic of the city. On the one hand there’s the meaning of the word in its temporal sense and on this night of fellowship and good cheer it shouldn’t just be about one night. The word says that this celebration should be eternal in human life.

But it also says a lot about Sydney that Arthur Stace, who grew up in a brothel, came back from war shell-shocked and became an habitual criminal and alcoholic, should be able to reinvent himself and try to bring joy and meaning into people’s lives. This is a quintessentially Sydney message and one we want to spread.⁹

Jones made no mention of religion, but his sentiments were capable of appealing to believers and unbelievers alike.

And that is how Eternity was received on 1 January 2000. In the days that followed, there was scarcely a word of protest and plenty of delighted praise.¹⁰ Expatriate author Peter Carey, watching from New York, had felt ‘insanely proud and happy at this secret message from my home.’¹¹ A fortnight later, a local Sydney personality, Leo Schofield, wrote with approval in his Sunday Telegraph column that ‘no-one will quickly forget … the impression it made on all Sydneysiders.’¹²

That impression remains firm to this day. During the summer of 2016–17, the word ‘Empathy’ began to appear in chalk on the streets of Sydney in Arthur’s familiar style. A group known as Empathy Nation was responsible, its vision ‘to see empathy become a part of everyday life – in our families, workplaces and politics.’¹³

There are several reasons why a biography of Arthur Stace is timely. The fact that 2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of his death – and the two-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Bible Society Australia – is largely coincidental.

No biography of Stace has been written before. There have been numerous short sketches, usually derivative of others and often marred by factual errors. A good many misconceptions have developed about Arthur Stace and it is time they were dispelled. The true facts are engrossing enough; there is no need for embellishment.

To take a fairly trivial example, Stace did not ‘grow up in a brothel’, as Ignatius Jones suggested back in 2000. It is a fact, however, that as a young man Stace worked in and for a brothel. As we shall see in Chapter 4, this establishment was in Surry Hills and was owned and operated by his older sister Minnie.

Similarly, in January 2000 the Sunday Telegraph announced the ‘discovery’ of Stace’s grave in Botany cemetery. ‘The location was revealed only when a reader contacted … Leo Schofield last week,’ a journalist reported.¹⁴ In truth, the gravesite was never ‘lost.’ Those who knew and loved Arthur always remembered where his mortal remains had been buried. Indeed, May Thompson had been present at the burial service in October 1969 – she gave the eulogy – and later paid for the handsome headstone that is still maintained there.

If these errors were minor, others have been more serious. An enduring myth about Stace is that he was illiterate; that his ability to write the word Eternity was some kind of supernatural gift. A resourceful writer-historian, Pauline Conolly, tried to scotch this notion in 2009;¹⁵ but still it persists. Again, as we shall see, the truth is more nuanced – yet none the less fascinating for that.

Most importantly, Arthur Stace was not a ‘weirdo.’ Several modern-day commentators have felt free to label him as mentally ill – ‘almost certainly schizophrenic’, offered one in 2006¹⁶ – but this was just not so. He was unusual, certainly, but the same could be said of every prodigious achiever in human history. The Rev. Bernard G. Judd, a friend of Arthur’s for some 30 years, came closest to the mark during an on-camera interview in 1994: ‘He was a thorough-going, reasonable, rational Christian … He was indomitable. He was not a fanatic, he was not obsessed. He had a purpose, and nothing could stop him.’¹⁷

Judd objected to Arthur being ‘lumped in’ with run-of-the-mill attention-seekers – the narcissists and the kooks. Sydney has certainly had its share of those.

Another way of putting it is this: Arthur Stace was an ordinary man who did one extraordinary thing. But, on top of that, he lived through extraordinary times.

Like, say, A.B. (Bert) Facey, author of that artlessly gripping memoir A Fortunate Life, Stace was a living embodiment of an Australia that no longer exists. Both were quintessential working-class¹⁸ battlers. Both had limited schooling and endured unhappy, disrupted childhoods. Their lives were shaped by the economic depression of the 1890s, Federation, the rise of the Australian Labor Party, World War I, the ‘roaring’ twenties, the temperance movement, the Great Depression. True, Facey lived a sober, law-abiding life from cradle to grave while Stace was a reformed alcoholic and petty criminal. But their key character traits were the same: modesty, frugality, decency, a certain laconic style.

Both Facey and Stace experienced wholly unexpected fame late in their lives, and had something like sainthood conferred upon them in death.

The great difference between them concerned religion. Facey lost any faith he once had on the hills of Gallipoli: he was an atheist ever after.¹⁹ Stace, who served on the Western Front as a stretcher-bearer, converted in August 1930 to evangelical Christianity. From that moment, his faith was the moving force behind everything he did. It is important to remember that the Eternity mission was but one aspect – if by far the most famous – of his ‘life in Christ.’ In the words of John Starr, long-time secretary of the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle and a close friend of Arthur in later life, ‘his gratitude for salvation and his zest for service had only one focus, to please God alone. He was truly humble.’²⁰

This book aims to tell Stace’s story in full – its sad and disgraceful aspects as well as the quirky and admirable. Many episodes have never been recounted previously. May Thompson spent her last three decades safeguarding and expanding the documentary record of Stace’s life. When she died in 2002, she passed the torch to her daughter Elizabeth, who has continued the process with remarkable doggedness and skill. Between them, mother and daughter also kept track of every appropriation of the Eternity story since Stace’s death, whether religious, cultural or commercial. I will detail these in the last two chapters.

Finally, I intend Mr Eternity as a tribute to three great Australian Christians – men of the church who ministered to Arthur Stace and turned his life on its head. Their names were R.B.S. Hammond (1870– 1946), John Gotch Ridley (1896–1976) and Lisle M. Thompson (1910– 64). Hammond was of the Church of England; Ridley and Thompson were Baptists. Following his conversion in August 1930, Stace worshipped for about nine years at Hammond’s St Barnabas’ church on Broadway; after that, for the best part of three decades, his spiritual home was the Burton Street Baptist Tabernacle in Darlinghurst.

In the course of telling this story, two distinctive strains of Christianity will emerge. Both have been of crucial importance in our history. Sometimes they are seen as contradictory; in fact they are, or should be, complementary.

One strain might be termed ‘charitable’ or ‘practical’ Christianity, with its emphasis on the doing of good to others in this earthly world. In short: the Golden Rule. The other strain is ‘personal’ or ‘salvation-based’ Christianity. Here the emphasis is on the fate, in the afterlife, of the individual’s immortal soul.

The focus of Arthur Stace’s Eternity crusade was individual salvation. It was the same with his open-air street missioning and other forms of evangelism. But as I hope also to show, he did not neglect other, more worldly causes. Far from it. He was a loving son and brother, a devoted husband, and a loyal friend. He performed countless acts of private charity. He understood to the depth of his being that faith without deeds is dead. He never tired of telling people that it was a kindly minister’s offer of ‘a cuppa tea and a rock cake’ that brought him to faith in the first place.

Roy Williams

October 2017

1. Born Unto Trouble

The childhood shows the man

As morning shows the day.

John Milton, ‘Paradise Regained’

By the normal rules of the world, Arthur Malcolm Stace was doomed from the start to a life of sorrow. His early childhood was one of deprivation and depravity.

Born on 9 February 1885 in a dingy terrace house in the working-class Sydney suburb of Redfern¹ – one of a string of rented properties that his embattled parents called home – Arthur knew little but suffering. During the previous six years, each move his family made had been a step down the socio-economic ladder. And there would be more tribulations to come.

Outwardly at least, Arthur’s father cut a fine figure. William Wood Stace, 29 years old when Arthur came into the world, was an Englishman of good breeding. Well-educated and pleasantly spoken – and tall, dark, and handsome to boot² – he may have struck casual observers as a decent, productive citizen. But the truth was otherwise. William’s basic problem was that he was unskilled – he possessed neither professional qualifications nor the practical know-how of an artisan.³ It seems that he was unable or unwilling to live by his wits, or to toil away full-time as a manual labourer.⁴

In short, he could never earn a sufficient income. He was a well-meaning wastrel. And he lived in an era when the social safety net was thin. Ultimately he took solace in the bottle.

Arthur’s mother, Laura Lewis, was a very different person. Four years younger than William, she was a native-born Australian of convict/farming stock, raised in the Windsor district of New South Wales some 40 miles (70 kilometres) to Sydney’s west. She had little schooling and few social graces. Apart from a determined temperament, her best asset was her physical beauty. As a very young woman Laura had been a winsome sight: petite and fair, with attractive blue eyes. In a different life she might have aged gracefully and blossomed into a caring, competent wife and mother.

In nineteenth-century Australia, most women lost their looks much more quickly than they do today. Harsh sunlight, multiple childbirths, backbreaking domestic chores, poor food and medicine – all took their toll. But Laura Lewis must have aged more rapidly than most.

Arthur was her sixth child. As a teenager in Windsor, before she met William Wood Stace, Laura had already given birth to two babies (in both cases the father is unknown). One had died within days, but Clara, almost nine when Arthur was born,

Reviews for Mr Eternity

[Byard Parks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So well researched, and so inspiring. Great read. (Found this after watching several YouTube video's on Arthur Stace. An amazing story.